Gone Fishin'
by OnceUponASomeday
Summary: A continuation, in a way, of Carousels. Deacon, Rayna and Maddie and a little bonding up at the cabin.


**Turns out after that wonderful episode last week all I want to write is cheese... This is set after Carousels, and would have been a second chapter of that story in its entirety, except that there isn't a hint of a carousel or a dodgem anywhere in this one. So this will instead be a few chapters long, until I've purged the happy sighs from my system and am back to weeping at my TV/the fact that Deacon is wearing clothes (such an unnecessary waste of your wardrobe budget, Nashville). **

The silence that rode with them in the car was awkward, though not unpleasantly so. It was broken by occasional polite-conversation-starters from Deacon and the odd look-at-that-you-can-still-collect-your-own-eggs-a t-Marty-McCreedy's-farm from Rayna, until Deacon cut to the chase and flipped the radio on. The opening strains of _Lucille_ filled the inside of the truck, and the pressure to talk died away, letting the beauty of the scenery around them and the anticipation of what was to come over the next couple of days settle in its place.

Maddie sat in the backseat, half her attention on the cartoon-green forest flashing by on their right side, half on the two people sat up front. They'd been talking on the phone a lot; she'd heard her mother speaking in that low voice she adopted when it was dark outside and hushed in the house, and she knew she'd been the topic of conversation - she'd heard her name mentioned more than once. The way Rayna spoke was always just a little guarded, like she was trying to keep herself out of the equation as much as it was possible to. She took a step back whenever Deacon came around to give Maddie lessons on the guitar, as he had been doing the past few weeks, letting the two of them get to know each other better. She'd potter in the kitchen, bring them tea every so often and see how they were doing, and sometimes she'd stay a while and lean against the wall to listen to them, a soft smile on her face, before she slipped away and left them to it, but she never stayed long, and she never said much.

Rayna was in the passenger seat, her face turned towards the window. Maddie watched her, the way she moved her head a little as she sang along quietly to the song, the tapping of her long fingers against the console. She was beautiful, her mother. Her hair was in loose waves, tumbling down around her face, a soft ivory sweater falling off one shoulder. Deacon glanced over at her more than once, and Maddie could only catch half his expression from his profile, but she wasn't sure she would be able to decipher all it said regardless.

They drove for a couple of hours, stopping for gas and groceries, before Deacon pulled onto what was barely more than a dirt track and the truck scraped its way through spindly tree branches. Night was approaching, the sky a vivid indigo, and Maddie wondered how it was that the same sky she saw every day in the city could look so different out here, so much more intense.

'Well,' Deacon said eventually, clearing his throat and breaking the silence, 'this is about the place.'

The track opened up onto a wider road, giving way a little further through dusty mud and gravel to an expanse of water surrounded by bristly trees and reeds, gusts of wind sending ripples scurrying across it. There by the side of the lake, looking as though it could have grown up from the ground of its own accord, was a little wooden cabin, two rocking chairs and a loveseat on its front porch and pots of flowers scattered around its perimeter.

'Looks like Mrs Galloway's been waterin' those things again,' Deacon said, somewhat baffled, and Rayna laughed.

'_Those things_ are roses, and she's been doin' it for twenty years, I don't think she's gonna stop 'til she's six feet under.'

'She's been about a hundred and three the whole time we've known her Ray, I doubt it'll be long.'

'Whatever are you gonna do about your little jungle then, huh?' she said, her voice teasing.

He threw her a grin before he hopped out of the car and opened Maddie's door for her, and she let him help her out onto the grass. The sky wasn't the only thing that was more high definition in the country - the air was biting, and she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself and looking about. There wasn't another house for a long way; the only one she could see was on the opposite bank - Mrs Galloway's, she presumed - further down the water.

'So this is your cabin,' she said, and Deacon nodded. He seemed worried, apprehensive maybe that she wouldn't like it, but he couldn't be more wrong. She hadn't even set foot inside and she was smitten already. 'I love it,' she said honestly, and his mouth tugged up at the corners.

'Let's get on inside before you freeze then, huh?'

#

Her room was the one at the end of a short corridor from the living room, nestled between a simple bathroom and a cupboard that he said was full of broken guitars he'd never gotten around to having dusted off and repaired. She'd been his daughter for six months - technically - and she already had a room. He must have been up there at some point in the couple of weeks since she'd suggested they spend a weekend at the cabin, the three of them; there were soft purple covers on the single bed, a pile of books by the writer she'd told him she liked stacked on the bedside table, a box of her favourite candy on the pillow.

Deacon dropped her bag inside the door of the small room and left her to get herself sorted, and she sat down happily on the bed, wondering what the weekend would bring. She and Deacon had been slowly but steadily figuring each other out, neither sure what their relationship was going to look like, but there was no pressure to know, only the want to be in each other's lives. They were doing well; she'd picked out a handful of her favourite songs by him and he'd told her what they were about - Rayna, always Rayna - and how he'd come to write them: the argument that had led to one, the lazy Sunday afternoon in the sunshine that had conjured another. One was written on a day they'd ditched a tour rehearsal without telling anyone and had taken a greyhound bus right out of whatever town they'd been in, safely anonymous in hats and big sunglasses. Deacon had asked about her friends, what her favourite subjects were at school, whether she liked the crunchy or the smooth kind of peanut butter.

Sometimes it felt like they were new friends at summer camp, gradually building up a picture of each other and growing closer with each new discovery, but as Maddie came to understand who Deacon was, who he really was, an added element was coming increasingly into focus - she was also getting to know who her mother really was. It was new to her, how entangled their lives had always been, how something that had shaped Deacon had shaped Rayna too. The stories Maddie thought she knew by heart were twisting and turning, as though another camera lens had been trained on all the moments that were so familiar to her and she was in a dark room, watching the pictures develop and seeing everything from a new angle. She realised that to know the man she was newly discovering as a father, she had to know her mother too - they came as a package, and the thought had taken hold and intrigued her. Forging a relationship with Deacon was one thing, but it would never be complete without Rayna.

She dared to let the word _family_ flit through her head before she told herself not to run before she could walk, and stood up to grab her bag. There were empty hangers in the closet at the foot of the bed and she draped her clothes on them, smiling at the giant pair of woolly socks he'd put on one of the shelves for her. 'It gets real cold up there,' he'd said, when he'd called the day before to ask if she was all packed. 'You're gonna want to bring some warm stuff.'

#

'This was a great idea she had, us all comin' here,' Maddie heard Deacon say as she opened the door of her room. She stood for a moment, listening.

'Yeah, it was. I was kinda surprised at first, I gotta say, but I think it'll be good for her.'

'I think it'll be good for all of us Ray.'

Rayna was quiet for a second, and Maddie could picture the careful smile she gave him. There was a lot she was careful about lately, around Deacon at least. She heard her soft 'Yeah,' and moved a little further down the corridor towards the kitchen.

'This place always was a little haven away from the rest of the world for us,' Rayna continued, the rustling of bags almost drowning out her words. 'Could always rely on the cabin for peace and quiet.'

Deacon laughed, a little wryly. 'Maybe not _always_.'

'Well…no, maybe not always.'

Maddie wondered if they were referring to his drinking days. She'd read a lot about that time - or times, plural, from what the articles had said - and he'd been off the road for a lot of it, absent from Rayna's shows with no acknowledgement or explanation from her. Maybe the cabin was where he'd been, giving in to the urge to drink, maybe trying to lock himself away to fight it. She'd gotten the feeling, from the subtle deep breath Rayna had taken when they'd walked up to the front door and waited for Deacon to pluck his key from under a plant pot, that a lot had happened between these walls.

'I know life's been all upside down for Maddie lately,' Deacon said. 'I think this place might just be the same kinda refuge for her as it has been for us before. Plus,' he added, the bottles in the door of the fridge rattling as he closed it, 'ain't nowhere better to learn to fish than out here.'

'Hi,' Maddie said, emerging from her hiding place and walking into the midst of Deacon and Rayna starting dinner.

'Hey sweetie,' Rayna said warmly. 'You hungry?'

She leaned against the counter, looking at the vegetables Deacon was chopping. 'Starving.'

They sliced and diced in comfortable conversation, Rayna pulling jars of herbs from cupboards and wooden spoons from drawers. The kitchen seemed as familiar to her as the one she cooked breakfast in every morning, and Maddie wondered just how much time her mother had spent there. A lot, she guessed, as Rayna reached an arm over Deacon's shoulder and plucked glasses from a cabinet; he dipped his head out of her way and carried on stirring his pan without missing a beat. It was like watching them dance steps they'd rehearsed to perfection.

'We were thinkin' tomorrow mornin' we could go for a walk,' Rayna said, handing her cutlery to set the table with, 'help you get a feel for where in the world you are. It's strange for you, gettin' here in the dark and not knowin' what's around you.'

'Okay,' Maddie said, nodding, 'that sounds good.' She laid woven placemats on the table, noticing a frame on the bookcase next to it as she did, a photograph in it of Rayna, Deacon and a couple of other people she didn't recognise, all of them little more than teenagers. Deacon was stood behind Rayna, his arms around her and his chin on her shoulder, and she was leaning back into him, a look on her face that Maddie had never seen before. 'Could we maybe go out on the lake too? You said you had a boat here, right?'

'Sure do,' Deacon said, 'little rowboat, down by the dock. I can teach you to take it for a spin, if you like.'

'Oh I don't know how good I'd be at that, I have really weak arms. I'm terrible at rowing anything.'

Deacon chuckled. 'Well let me tell you, you can't possibly be worse than your momma. She capsized us the first time I ever got in a boat with her. Almost drowned.'

Maddie giggled, and Rayna swatted him with a tea towel. 'That is not true.'

'Damn well is, you were dangerous with those oars. You swallowed so much pond water I had to give you mouth to mouth.'

'Oh you did not,' she said, hiding a smile. 'He did not.' She threw a handful of spices into his pan and he stirred them in. 'I can row a boat.'

'We'll see about that tomorrow,' Deacon said, throwing Maddie a wink. She picked up the glasses Rayna had put on the countertop and took them over to the table, looking up at the picture again.

#

Dinner was accompanied by stories of the best fish Deacon had caught, getting lost in the woods behind the cabin on summer afternoons and the many power outages that happened in the colder months, leaving them writing songs by the light from the fire. They finished eating, Maddie impressed with their joint culinary efforts, and Deacon brought some logs in from an outhouse and lit them in the fireplace. She watched the flames take hold, imagining what it must have been like, the two of them sitting around scribbling lyrics in the crackling shadows.

When Rayna suggested they get into their pyjamas she was quick to agree, pulling the socks on too before she headed back out to the living room. She sat crossed legged on the sheepskin rug in front of the blazing fire, wiggling her woolly toes, Rayna by her side.

'Your momma brought you here once, she ever tell you that?' Deacon asked, sitting opposite them with his arms resting on his knees. Maddie shook her head. 'You were just a baby, a real quiet one too, rarely heard a peep from you.' He smiled at her, looking over at Rayna who let her head fall back against the armchair behind her, losing herself in the memory.

'I wasn't in your momma's band for a little while after you were born, I took a bit of a break. Ray though, she doesn't know how to take breaks, so she went out on tour when you weren't that old at all. Your first tour, before you could walk a step - not bad huh?'

She looked at Rayna. 'Really?'

'Really,' she said, nodding, 'I guess I got itchy feet stayin' at home too long.' There was a look she gave Deacon that said there was more to it than that, but she didn't elaborate. 'You loved the music,' she went on, 'you'd squeal like a little monkey and wave your arms in the air all the way through my soundchecks. There was this one song though, you'd just cry and cry until that one was over, every time. I took it off my set list in the end.'

'Sorry,' Maddie laughed, noticing the way the firelight flickered in Rayna's eyes. 'Guess I didn't like that one so much.'

'No,' Rayna said softly, reaching out to stroke her hair. 'I guess you didn't.' She looked up at Deacon, who was watching her curiously. 'It was called _This Time's Goodbye_.'

'Maybe that's why I didn't like it.' Maddie's voice was just above a whisper as she looked between them, and there was quiet, an understanding hanging in the air.

Rayna broke their gaze, smiling down at her daughter. 'Well,' she said, ending the moment, 'after a couple of months of _that_, we went home, but you'd clearly gotten a taste for life on the road and you didn't like that one bit. You were such a quiet baby, just like Deacon says - you were so still, these big eyes just peerin' on up at everybody. And then all of a sudden you were cryin' all night, refusin' to keep anythin' down.' She twirled a strand of Maddie's hair around her finger. 'Your dad had to go away on business for a few days, and I'd had no sleep, couldn't so much as sit down without you just wailin' all heartbroken at me - I about lost my mind.'

'So she brought you here,' Deacon finished, and Rayna nodded.

'So I brought you here.' She stretched her legs out across the rug, burrowing her bare feet into the sheepskin. 'Deacon had been livin' up here for a while, stayin' out of the hubbub of the city and all, and he'd met you a handful of times, but you'd never really had the chance to get to know each other. I don't really know what it was that told me to come up here with you, but I just knew it was what you needed.'

'And she was right, you were good as gold, soon as y'all came through the door.'

'I was?'

'Yup. No cryin', no fussin'. You sat right in that chair there,' he motioned to the one they were leaning against, 'propped up on all the cushions, like you were queen o' the castle.'

'Deacon played you some stuff on the guitar and after you keepin' me up all those nights like you were hell-bent on it, you fell asleep for him in all of a minute.'

'You weren't the only one - your momma dozed off too over on the couch, didn't wake up til the next mornin'. Guess my company just wasn't excitin' enough for y'all,' Deacon said, and the irony wasn't lost on Maddie that she felt her eyelids growing heavier.

The last thing she saw before she let Rayna pull her gently to her feet and lead her towards her bedroom was the crackle and pop of a log in the fire, showering embers onto the hearth and illuminating the smile on Deacon's face.


End file.
